Unfortunately, Mitch's primary example, land development, shows the inherent problem with putting the theory of freedom into practice within society. If I can buy the land I should get to do whatever I want with it, right? We seem to be moving in that direction, but this is a very radical change from the manner in which Americans once understood it. Land use affects the neighbors — a lot, and in a variety of ways.

I'm not talking just about smoke-belching factories, here. In fact, more of those are closing than opening these days. I'm talking more than anything about good old housing subdivisions (inventions, by the way, of the post-World War II era). Today in most places any developer with the cash can buy out a cash-strapped farmer a few miles out of town, throw up some houses and make a fortune. Often he won't even have to hook up to the sewer or water lines (septic tanks and well water). Towns fight them in court, sometimes, and almost always lose. The result, of course, is gridlock, smog, higher taxes and yet more strip malls and strip mall culture.

"That's the free market" you say? What market? Markets consist of people who are buying and selling, but the people in a town about to be invaded by sprawl are left out of the transaction altogether. Now, I'm not saying we should have a vote on every new subdivision. Voting is not the answer to everything. Instead, I think it important that we look to our own history to see how we used to deal with the issue of new settlements. And we dealt with them very well, thank you. From the settlement of Massachusetts Bay through the settlement of the west we knew enough to start new towns when we wanted to settle a bunch of people in one place. Everyone understood what was involved; custom and long practice served as a guide to planning a town center with neighborhoods spreading out from it. Now we've made real towns all but illegal in most of the United States. Sorry to retort to a policy prescription, but this should change. Free markets exist within communities. It seems to me we should allow communities to form before pretending land deals are "free."

In other ways, too, the emphasis on structuring society to make mass markets work has hurt us. Again, we need to rethink what we ought to be looking at in structuring our institutions — individuals, or families and communities?